Electricity is responsible for a fourth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—but manufacturing and industry make up over half. There is a solution though: nuclear energy.
Dow Chemical, for example, is the first manufacturer to pursue SMR technology to meet their goal of reducing emissions by 30 percent by 2030. They have signed a joint agreement with X-Energy to demonstrate the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor for an industrial site in North America. This partnership was highlighted at the recent CERAWeek, the world’s premier energy conference.
Want to learn more about how nuclear can decarbonize the entire economy? We’re asking the expert, NEI’s Director of Markets & Policy Benton Arnett.
We know that nuclear provides more than electricity—what applications are you seeing picking up steam?
Nice pun with the picking up steam. The applications I see, you know, getting the most interest from nuclear outside of electric applications are really around industrial process heat and hydrogen production. So, nuclear has some unique capabilities to produce both, and particularly with some of the advanced reactors we see coming out, they’re really capable of reaching some of those higher temperatures to really unlock these industrial demand curves that we haven’t had access to before.
How will nuclear energy help to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors?
So, when we think about hard-to-abate sectors, I think it’s important to first think about why they’re so hard to abate. They really fall into two categories. The first are industries where they require substantial amounts of heat, so when we think about things like petrochemical processing, chemical production in general, so making plastics and those types of things, all the way to concrete manufacturing, they all require significant amounts of heat. There are ways you can get heat with electricity, you can use an electrolyzer or some other kind of intermediary, but nuclear power is really able to provide that heat directly so you don’t have to go through that intermediary—you can use heat directly from the advanced reactor.
So, that creates a lot of efficiencies for these companies who are looking at utilizing nuclear energy. The other piece of hard-to-abate sectors is really timing, so when we think about energy production—clean energy production—renewables are intermittent sources, and while they have to have a role in the grid, there are these sectors that require power 24 hours a day. And so for them, reliability is key, and the reliability of nuclear is second to none. It’s the highest capacity factor in the U.S.—we see that with our existing fleet, and we expect to see that with our advanced reactors as well.
Can existing nuclear plants produce some of these products?
The great thing about some of these nonelectric applications is that while we talk a lot about the advanced reactors that can help contribute to solving those hard-to-abate sectors and some of these other niche fields, is that we can actually do a lot of that with our existing fleet as it stands. As a matter of fact, when we think about something like hydrogen production, we have four pilot projects going on in the United States right now to produce hydrogen from existing reactors.
Is demand for energy beyond electricity impacting the demand you’re seeing for new nuclear?
The demand we see for applications we see outside electricity are definitely a part of the future we see for nuclear and some of the demand we see there. I think it is important to realize that all of these energy sources regardless of whether they currently use electricity or they use something like natural gas, they still need to be decarbonized. So, whether we take those industries and we electrify them, as we see with a lot of the work being done with electric vehicles, that’s really just shifting the energy consumption we saw previously from transportation onto the grid. You would need to produce more electricity to service those demanders on grid.
What’s a real-life example we’ve recently seen of nuclear beyond electricity?
You know, the Dow X-energy partnership is a great example of how this can really work in the real world. You have a large chemical processing company like Dow that demands a lot of power—and a lot of power that is honestly pretty hard to abate. It is high temperature, they need it 24/7, and so when they really started looking at their decarbonization plans, they said, you know we see a role for nuclear power here. So, that resulted in this deal which not only allows Dow or provides X-energy the opportunity to deploy one of their reactors at a Dow site in the Gulf Coast, but also Dow decided to take an equity stake in X-energy as a part of that deal. I think that was a really great vote of confidence and an example of how these deals can work in the future.
